Thursday, February 12, 2015

William Ewing Lecture at the AGO

"There is no richer genre in photography than landscape, true since the first days of the medium when explorer/photographers brought back pictures of distant lands. Today landscape takes on a new urgency, as Earth’s terrain is under threat. But contemporary photographers do not have uniform approaches to landscape: some remain faithful to visions of untrammeled nature, reveling in the venerable tradition of the Sublime, while others take an opposite view, arguing that the hand of humanity is so heavy and malign, that the wounds and scars on the planet must be acknowledged. Some photographers turn to irony and humour, documenting follies such as the Snow Dome in the middle of the Arabian desert, or ‘indoor’ rain forests.

And still others turn to fiction, inventing landscapes both utopian and dystopian. This well-illustrated lecture surveys the entire range of 21st century photography, featuring the work of our finest photographers." - Art Gallery of Toronto